Government funded website telling immigrants how to get free housing

Immigrants are being given special help to find council housing and benefits on a website funded by the Government.

By Martin Beckford, Social Affairs Correspondent

2:23PM BST 09 Sep 2008

The Housing Rights site offers advice to new arrivals in Britain on what welfare assistance they qualify for and how to claim it.

It also tells them how to take legal action if they think they have been denied a home on the grounds of their race.

The website includes individual guides for refugees, migrants from EU countries and their families, foreign students, Bulgarians and Romanians and victims of domestic violence.

It is part of a three-year project called Opening Doors run by the Chartered Institute of Housing and the Housing Associations' Charitable Trust, which has been given £120,000 by the Department for Communities and Local Government to help migrants settle in Britain.

This comes just days after a cross-party group of MPs called for immigration to the country to be scaled back to a "one in, one out" policy to reduce pressure on public services. Recent figures show 2.5million people moved to Britain over the past decade, with only 750,000 leaving.

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John Perry, policy adviser at the Chartered Institute of Housing, said: "One of the commonest problems that housing professionals meet in dealing with housing inquiries from migrants from abroad is knowing whether they have any entitlement to housing or homelessness assistance, and whether they are eligible for housing benefit.

"This web resource should fill this gap - and we hope that it will help to ensure that migrants get the help to which they are entitled."

But critics said taxpayers' money should not be spent on helping new arrivals to Britain access benefits.

Mark Wallace, campaign director for the TaxPayers' Alliance pressure group, said: "This sends out a deplorable message to migrants about Britain as a whole, and also about what we would hope they would contribute to the country.

"We should be welcoming people with assistance on how to get a job swiftly and join the hard-working majority of people, not on the quickest and easiest way to tap into benefits."

He added: "I'm not aware of a special website for people who have paid taxes here their whole lives."